Oskar Schindler addressing his workers at his factory.Schindler's List, is a film that came out in 1993 and won seven Oscar Awards. The movie is about a man named Oskar Schindler and the story of the movie takes place during World War II during the Holocaust when Hitler was in power. Schindler is a struggling business man and thinking about nothing more than wealth, decides that this would be his perfect opportunity to try and flourish his career. Schindler joins the Nazi party in order to gain access to what he saw as beneficial rights at the time. These rights would allow him to create his factory and use the Jewish people that were being put in the Ghettos as slave labors. Through out the movie Schindler slowly begins to realize that even though the people working in his factory may be Jewish, they are people just like him and religion is the only thing that really differentiated them. As he begins to realize this, he starts to fight to keep them at his factory where he knows they will be safe from being killed. To do this, he had to bribe many people and pay a lot of money. He comes up with reasons for why every single worker at his factory is "essential" to keep them from being sent away. Originally, Schindler's factory produced mess-kits, including items such as pots and pans but later in the movie it turns into an artillery factory. Schinlder alters the machines at his factory to make sure that any ammunition produced would not fire correctly, this was one of the ways that he helped stop the mass killing of Jews, besides from keeping them at the factory. Over the next few years, not a single person is killed at his factory. When World War II ends, Schindler sets his factory workers free and is left to escape town because legally he took a part in slave labor. Schindler realized the wrong doing of the Nazi party before much of the world caught on and in total was able to save over 1,000 Jews even though doing so put his own life in major risk.
Power is a theme that is explored a lot in this movie. Power makes some corrupt while in other cases it brings out the best in people. To me, power is a huge responsibility and I don't think many individuals today are capable of having full power over anything. For example, Goeth related his life back to his power and attempted to be in control of everything at every second, obviously he misused the power that he had. Schindler, on the other hand changes how he uses his power through out the plot of the movie. At the beginning, he uses his power as a business tool to make as much profit as possible, but slowly as he begins to realize what is actually happening uses it for good. Although he did bribe other officials, it was to save lives of innocent people and I would consider this a good use of power.
I think that many events that took place through out the movie led Schindler from being an "anti-hero" to a hero. I think that seeing so many innocent people killed had a large affect on this. I think another factor of this was that he began making friends with the Jewish people who worked at his factory, and started to realize they were no different than him and did not deserve to be treated how they were being treated.
The film expresses many ideas and gives a great insight into this time period. I think that the way the movie was put together and the plot line made it an effective film, and something I don't think I will soon forget. Relating this to our project currently being done in class I wrote a poem about one person being able to change something, but people joining together being able to change more. I think the movie effectively portrayed the classic line of you can do anything if you try, and really showed that you can make change happen. It also led to me to wonder what would have happened if Schindler had more accomplices, what would have been able to be achieved then?
